Another Marvelous Thing by Laurie Colwin Read Free Book Online

smug, you’d read him, too. Besides, a man needs to keep up with his times.”
    â€œHuh,” said Billy. “Well, I made up an all purpose Important Title for you in the car. I was thinking about your bookshelves and I synthesized all the titles into one Very Important Title. You can use it when people ask you what you’re reading and you aren’t actually reading anything.”
    â€œWhat’s that?” said Francis.
    â€œIt’s Towards a Scarcity of Needs ,” she said. “I’m ever so proud of it. It has a nice, official sound and it means absolutely nothing at all. It’s the right title for a man who goes on an illicit trip and brings a book along, to say nothing of constantly listening to the news on the radio.”
    Towards a Scarcity of Needs ! No one in the world except Francis and Billy would ever know what this meant. If he ever mentioned it in passing, no one would have the slightest idea what he was talking about.
    Having a love affair, Francis reflected, was not unlike being the co-governor of a tiny, private kingdom in some remote country with only two inhabitants—you and the other co-governor. This kingdom had flora and fauna, a national bird, language, reference, conceit, a national anthem ( Towards a Scarcity of Needs ), cheers, songs, and gestures. It also had national censorship—the taboo subjects are taboo. The idea that one of the co-governors has a life outside the kingdom always brings pain. For example, the afternoon Francis’s eye fell on a thick air letter in an elderly hand. When pressed, Billy turned red and explained that for many years she had been having a correspondence with a retired schoolteacher in the town of North-leach whom she had met during one of her research periods in the Cotswolds. He sent her hand-knitted mittens of local wool. She sent him new mystery books. They wrote a letter each month. This information left Francis speechless, like a blow to the stomach with a flat object. The moment he stepped out of her house her life without him began. Of course, the same could be said of him.
    What richness! what privacy! what sadness!
    Suddenly, Francis was exhausted. It had been a long two days: a tiring drive to Vermont, the strangeness of having Billy all to himself with no curfew, their odd and scarce hours of sleep. He leaned against the insufficient pillows. At home he slept with two pillows filled amply with European goosedown.
    Life was really very simple. What he wanted to know was this: did Billy love him more than she loved her husband, Grey? On the other hand, life was very complicated. He did not want to know any of the possible answers to this question. His eyelids were heavy but he thought he might rouse himself and ask Billy some burning question such as: what are we doing together?
    He turned and there was Billy wearing his T-shirt. Her hair fell into her eyes, and she brushed it off her face with a drowsy hand. She was fast asleep, her head full of alien, unknowable dreams.

French Movie
    Billy Delielle sat in her study on a rainy afternoon staring out the window and watching the rain fall in steady sheets. Her papers were spread before her. She was rewriting the third chapter of her dissertation, which was entitled “The Economics of the Medieval Wool Trade in a Cotswold Village.”
    Three years ago Billy had gotten a study grant which she had spent in a cramped alcove in the Gloucester records office tracing the rising and declining fortunes of shepherds, landowners, weavers, and cloth merchants. Grey timed his vacation with Billy’s grant. Together they put up at the Heald Hotel outside of Chipping Camden, where they shared a lumpy bed in a room wallpapered with cabbage roses.
    Billy remembered the exact smell of her alcove: dust, old paper, floor wax. She remembered the afternoon hikes she took with Grey and the hours they had spent exploring in their rented car. When her grant expired they drove